Kermit Hardware Setup

Dewar Internals

To be written:

Optical Alignment procedures

Filter/mirror/pupil changeout procedures

Dewar

Carefully put the inner shield lid back in place and tighten all the
screws. With the grooved (inside) side of the dewar lid facing up,
carefully clean the groove using isopropyl, making sure to remove any
debris to ensure a good seal. Apply vacuum grease to the O-ring and
place it in the groove. Dab some extra vacuum grease onto the corners
of the O-ring to tack it in place in the groove.

It takes two people to comfortably lift the lid and place it onto the
dewar. Make sure to orient it correctly: the side with the black foot
should be above the other black feet on the dewar. Be very careful as
you do this, as the O-ring has a tendency to fall out of the groove.
If you try to tighten it with an improperly positioned O-ring, the
dewar won't seal and you potentially could break the O-ring if it gets
pinched. Make sure the O-ring is in the groove, and that the dewar lid
is sitting smooth and level on top of the dewar before trying
to tighten any of the screws.

To pump the dewar down, use the UH Varian Turbopump. Kermit has a
2" vacuum attachment, while the pump has a 3"; the appropriate adapter
hose can usually be found in the UH "Vacuum parts" box in the black
cabinet in AEOS Room 3. Once the vacuum pump is attached, just press
the "Start" button to begin pumping. Note that the Start button
doesn't look at all like a button: it's perfectly flush and looks just
like a sticker, so don't be fooled. The turbopump should spin up to
about 56 krpm within a few minutes. If it doesn't then you've got a
bad seal and need to check the O-ring again. Also, there is a silver
thumbscrew on the side of the vacuum pump; this is the purge valve.
Make sure it's closed all the way or the pump won't spin up. Finally,
make sure that the "Low speed" button right next to the start button
is not pressed.

It takes about twelve hours to pump down Kermit with this pump. You
may monitor the progress using the vacuum gauge built in to the Varian
pump, or better yet the vacuum gauge mounted on Kermit itself. This is
a Granville-Phillips series 354, which must be powered using a DC
power supply and adapter cable (see picture). It wants 24 V DC, 12 W max, and is
protected against reversal and overvoltage. The gauge will
automatically turn itself off if the pressure is above 5e-2 Torr. To
turn it back on, press the reset switch on the adapter cable.

Cryocooler and Compressor

Kermit is cooled by a CTI Crygenics model 1050 closed-cycle cold head.
The compressor for this cold head requires 220 V 3-phase AC power from
a five-pin socket.

The hoses should always be stored with the end-caps on to keep them
clean; remove the end caps, screw the two end caps together, and store
them in the small plastic case labelled "Kermit Cryo Tools".
When connecting the cryocooler hoses to the dewar, first apply a drop
or two of isopropyl alcohol to the rotating flange on the hose end.
Also use a kimwipe to gently clean the ends of the hoses.

They are labelled "Supply" and "Return",
matching the connectors on the compressor and cold head.
The hoses can be connected in either order. Be very careful to
connect the hoses properly! There are wrenches in the "Kermit Cryo
Tools" box in two different sizes: one for screwing the flange into
place, and the other for holding the cable still so it does not twist
while you screw the flange into place.

When connecting the hoses, please make sure to keep the hose end-caps
somewhere they can be found when next needed (I suggest the "cryo pump
tools and caps" drawer in AEOS Room 3). Similarly, when disconnecting
the hoses, make sure to find and replace the caps on both hoses.

Always turn the compressor on first, then the cold head. To shut off,
do the reverse.

Temperature Monitor

A Lakeshore model 331 temperature controller is used to monitor and regulate the
detector temperature. This should be connected before starting
cooldown so you can monitor the cooling progress.
Just connect the cable from the Lakeshore to P6 on Kermit, and plug the
Lakeshore in to wall power. The Lakeshore has two temperature
readouts: A is at the detector heater and B is at the
cold plate.

After you have turned on the Lakeshore, press the Heater Range
button until the range is High, then press Enter. This
activates the heater resistor used to regulate the detector
temperature.

A long white serial cable connects the Lakeshore temperature monitor
to the Kermit computer sauron. Connect the cable to the
serial port on the Lakeshore and to the serial port B on the back of
sauron

Motor Controller

The Galil motor controller communicates with sauron over
ethernet. It cannot do DHCP, so you have to set the address manually.
The procedure for changing the IP address is as follows:

Connect a serial cable from some computer's serial port to the
"main port" on the Galil (not the "aux port", mind you!).

Connect over this serial line using the terminal program of your
choice. Try tip on Solaris, or use the TCL program
serialout.tcl on Linux. The serial settings are 19200, n, 8, 1.

Type

IA aaa,bbb,ccc,ddd
BN

Note that the IP address must be separated by commas, not
periods! The first command sets the new internet address, while the
second one burns it into flash memory for storage when powered off.

On sauron, edit the file ~/kermit.conf so that
the set motorcontroller_ip line reflects the new IP address.

Cabling

The cabling for Kermit should be set up according to this diagram.

All connections to the dewar are using custom cables with hermetic
connectors fabricated by UH/UCB. I'll eventually link from here to the
wiring diagrams for said cables.

connect the white monitor to the VGA port in the PCI card (near
top of computer)

connect the black monitor to the VGA port on the motherboard (near
bottom)

Grounding

THIS IS REALLY IMPORTANT, SO PAY ATTENTION HERE,
FOLKS. Unless you get things properly grounded, you're going to
get lots of read noise and otherwise messed up frames.

Take a steel grounding cable. Attach one end to Kermit (Unscrew one of
the steel screws from the dewar midline, stick the cable under it,
then screw it back in FIRMLY to make a good connection.)

Attach the other end of the grounding cable (or the middle if
it's a long cable, that's OK too) to the Leach electronics box.

You do not need to connect the grounding cable to the big wall
ground plate. In fact, that may make things worse; I'm not sure.

Both Kermit and electronics box have historically been on rubber
insulation keeping them electrically out of contact with the optical
table. I don't know if this step is necessary or not.

In the event that Kermit is not behaving properly, check that these
ground connections are made firmly.

The Leach electronics box generates a fair amount of heat. It is
designed to run using water cooling through a heat exchanger to keep
the cards cool, and we will try to do it this way during the March
run. On the other hand, it's been used with just air cooling (case
open, external fan blowing air through) successfully, though it does
get a bit warmer than we might want that way.

Initial Power-up

The control computer sauron should be turned on first, but
the Kermit software does not need to be running yet.

Turn on the Leach electronics box. There are green LEDs next to the
fiber optic receivers inside the electronics box and computer (the one
on the back of the computer is easiest to see). If the green light
turns on, you have a functional fiber optic comm link and can proceed.
If the green light does not turn on, the fiber optic is mis-cabled.
Swap the two connectors on one end of the cable. The green light
should now be on.

Disassembly

Follow these steps to disassemble Kermit at the end of the run.

Turn off the cold head and compressor. Disconnect the power cable
from the cold head. Using the wrenches from the Kermit Cryo Tools box,
disconnect the helium hoses from the cold head and compressor.
Immediately screw the end-caps from the Cryo Tools box onto
both ends of the cables and the attachment points on the cold head and
compressor. It's very important to keep the O-rings on the cable ends
from getting contaminated with dirt.

Turn off the temperature controller. Disconnect the temperature monitor cable from the dewar and the
Lakeshore temperature controller. Disconnect the serial cable from the
Lakeshore controller and Kermmit computer.

Turn off the motor controller. There's a switch for the motor
driver power, but the Galil motor controller can only be turned off by
unplugging it. Disconnect the motor limit switch cable from the dewar. Disconnect
the motor power cables from the motor controller; you can't disconnect
them from the dewar so just coil them up nicely.

READ THIS CAREFULLY! READ IT THROUGH ENTIRELY BEFORE
PROCEEDING! Disconnecting the readout cables from the
detector is a very delicate operation. The detector is an extremely
expensive static-sensitive device, and if it gets cooked we're utterly
screwed. DO NOT FRY THE DETECTOR. In order to not fry the detector,
follow this proceedure precisely:

Get a grounding strap. Ground yourself to the dewar. The easiest
way to do this is to attach the grounding strap to one of the bolts
holding the dewar together. Unscrew the bolt, attach the grounding
strap, then screw the bolt back in. Wear the grounding strap
throughout the following.

Now again ground yourself to the dewar by briefly touching one of
the bolts. Bear in mind that the green and black anodyzed surfaces are
NOT conductive, so make sure to touch one of the steel bolts directly.

While touching a dewar bolt with one hand, with the other hand
touch the optical table, and then the Kermit readout electronic box.
This will dissipate any static electricity which may be present
between these objects.

Now carefully unscrew one of the readout cables from the dewar.
Immediately cover over the exposed dewar connector with aluminum foil.
Tape the foil in place so it doesn't fall off. I'm getting real
grounding plugs fabricated but for now this will have to do.

Repeat for the other two cables.

That's the delicate part of the proceedure. Once that's completed you
may disconnect the other ends of the cables from the Leach box and
then disconnect the Leach box from power at your leisure. Ideally,
once you have moved Kermit to its storage location in Room 3, you will
reconnect the Leach cables (with a similar degree of grounding
caution!) to keep the detector voltages tied to ground when the system
is in storage.

Disconnect the fiber optic cable from the Leach box and from
sauron. Coil it up carefully and loosely - it's a fiber optic
and is thus fragile and subject to minimum radius of curvature
restrictions. Don't try to coil it in a circle any tighter than about
a foot or so.

If necessary, move the dewar away from the coronagraph to have
adequate clearance around it. Attach the dewar window cover in front of the window. If
necessary, replace the tape so it sticks well. Re-attach the two front handles for Kermit which were removed for
clearance reasons.

Carefully lift the camera from the table to the ground. It weighs
about 250 pounds, so be sure to have adequate lifting power. The black
handles on the dewar and the black legs are all acceptable lifting
points.

If sauron is to be set up on a different IP address,
before shutting it down follow the proceedure to change its IP address. If done before moving
the machine, then it will boot properly onto the new network and may
be accessed by ssh when it has no monitor.
This page last updated by Marshall Perrin on
2004 March 04